3 charts for you today:
Tesla reported its biggest ever quarterly profit this week, notching up "operating profit" of $594m for the three months to March 2021. We dug into the report, to see just how the Tesla economic machine actually works.
Electric cars... and more
The bulk of Tesla's revenue does come from its core business of selling electric vehicles, with around $8.5bn of revenue from automotive sales — but around $1.9bn of revenue in its latest quarter came from other sources.
The largest of those is servicing and other charges to old Tesla cars, a segment that's likely to grow over time as the installed base of Tesla cars grows. Another source was $518m of revenue from selling emissions credits, which has been a lucrative, but surely unsustainable, way for Tesla to make a few extra (million) bucks.
Another $494m came from what Tesla calls Energy Generation & Storage, which relate to sales of solar panels, "powerwalls" and other home charging solutions. This is probably the most often cited division when discussions that "Tesla is so much more than a car company" crop up.
Tesla also booked a $101m of profit from sales of Bitcoin — which the company bought a chunk of earlier this year. So far this has proved a smart move from Musk, although we're not sure how "operational" you can consider trading cryptocurrency is.
The Oscars appears to be losing its shine.
In the last 16 years the audience tuning in to watch the Academy Awards ceremony has dropped from more than 42 million to just 9.8 million who tuned in to watch Nomadland scoop the top prize of Best Picture on Sunday.
The short term
There are some pretty valid excuses for why this year saw less interest than most. With cinemas closed for much of the last 12 months, audiences aren't as familiar with the movies and stars that are in them. On top of that the ceremony itself was lacking a little bit of its usual pomp and ceremony. The red carpet was slimmed down, some of the acceptance speeches came from satellite hubs in London, Paris and Sydney and a strict "no Zoom" rule meant that Anthony Hopkins, who won Best Actor, wasn't heard from at all (he was asleep in Wales).
The long term
With the rise of streaming and on-demand content, a lot of traditional TV shows have reported declining viewership — and there's a strong argument to be made for the Oscars to change up the format if they want to stay relevant. At the moment a typical Oscars broadcast is around 3-and-a-half hours long. That's a long time to watch hoping for something interesting to happen, when you know you can catch the clipped highlights in a short video the next day.
China has a bit of a population problem, but it might not be what you expect.
A scoop from the Financial Times reports that China is set to announce its first population drop in five decades — meaning that China's population has peaked well ahead of previous expert forecasts from the UN (shown in the chart above).
UN forecasts had China's population beginning to fall in the late 2020s, but the leaked census data — which has not yet been made public and is said to be very sensitive for Chinese officials — suggests that the relaxation of the controversial one-child policy in 2015 has done little to re-invigorate a baby boom.
Isn't this a good thing?
As we've written before, whenever birth rates are unusually high or low, countries end up with really different sized generations. That's not too bad on the way up (lots of young people), but if things reverse you get a top-heavy demography, with young people having to support a greater number of older people.
Taking the super long-term view, fewer people consuming resources obviously puts less stress and strain on our planet, which is a good thing — but that doesn't make it easy for China (or any other country) to plan for an ageing population.
1) Spotify has released its latest subscriber numbers, reporting 158 million premium subscribers, up only 2% on last quarter. Spotify shares were down more than 8% in pre-market trading.
2) The price of corn has jumped 16% in the last month and 44% so far this year as unseasonably bad weather and the pandemic has put pressure on global production.
3) A new study of 226 male sperm whales has found that male sperm whales can form bonds of "friendship" lasting up to 5 years.
4) The US Census data has been released, and it reveals that the US population hit 331 million in 2020, up more than 7% relative to 2010. The new numbers also mean new congressional seat divisions. New York state was reportedly just 89 more residents away from keeping another congressional seat.
5) Google's official domain in Argentina, Google.com.ar, was purchased legally for 270 Pesos (about $2.90) after a web designer noticed the site wasn't working properly.
6) The world's oldest bottle of whiskey is going up for auction. The bottle of bourbon is expected to fetch up to $40,000 and is estimated to have been produced between 1762 and 1802.
